Pre-Spring AD Bloggershoot AAR...

Yesterday a bunch of us yankees took our southern friend the Ambulance Driver to the shootin' range. He'd headed north to visit with TOTWTYTR and then attend a conference in Baltimore, so in an attempt to acclimate him to the sound of gunfire, we brought him to a local range. Ross was our gracious and generous host with the most...

Got Ammo?

...ammo that is. Ross was kind enough to host nine of us crazy bastards at his range, Harvard Sportsmen's Club, which is an absolutely magnificent range whose only detriment is being nearly an hour away from my house (otherwise I'd be a member there in a heartbeat).

Joining us at the range were:

• Ambulance Driver
• TOTWTYTR
• Borepatch
• Colin
• MedicMatthew
• Guest of Borepatch Don
• Self-proclaimed lurker Aaron
• Commenter/lurker AIM
  

We had plenty of toys to choose from:

My Gear

Pistols

Rifles

That's by no means all of the hardware there, either. We had enough small arms to conquer a small South American country. Or Canada, which is a lot closer. Sadly, time constraints and child care issues prevented us from entering the lucrative world of government toppling, so we settled for a massive firing line:

Something for Everyone

and what we were shooting at:

Assault Berm

Note the steel plates. Those are the bane of my existence. Try as I may, I could not hit those plates to save my damn life. I was nailing tin cans which are half the size or less (6" steel plate vs. soda can) at twice the distance with a .22LR rifle and iron sights, yet with my Gold Cup or my Security Six I'd be lucky to hit the plates half the time. The moniker "minute-of-berm" was, sadly, not erased with this outing...

Here's some pictures of people having a damn good time:

Our Gracious Host

Rare Photo of TOTWTYTR

Tactical AD

JayG the Cowboy

And, lastly, evidence of one helluva good day:

That's a Pile!

(that's borepatch's boot for size comparison)

Some random thoughts in no particular order:

• I really, really, really need to shoot more. Seriously.
• TOTWTYTR brought a Walther P22. I shot the hell out of that little gun, putting easily 70-80 rounds through it, all the Federal plated bulk ammo that I buy every time I walk into WallyWorld. And it ran fine. And shot great - I was dinging the steel plates at 25 yards more than 70% of the time with it. Shooting rapid fire.
• I really, really, really need to shoot more.
• I am apparently more of a rifleman than I thought - Ross let me shoot his Mosin-Nagant 91/30 at an Appleseed AQT target. While I shot a tad low, I grouped 3 out 5 shots in a half-dollar sized group. The first time I shot the gun. I was also hitting tin cans at 50 yards with my iron-sighted Remington 572 Fieldmaster pump-action .22LR.
• I really, really, really need to shoot more.
• The Bushmaster performed very well, all things considered. It shot over 200 rounds today, which was after shooting ~ 80 rounds at previous outings with minimal cleaning (boresnake and CLP on the BCG). Only on the last 30 round magazine did it start to have feeding issues (rounds not getting fully loaded into the breech); for the first 180 rounds it ran beautifully.
• I really, really, really need to shoot more.
• Shootin' stuff is fun.
  

All in all, an excellent time was had by all. Thanks especially to Ross for his gracious hosting; thanks to AD for making the arduous trek deep into yankeeland to visit with us; and thanks to everyone who came out to HSC to share in the gunnie goodness.

Now all that's left is cleaning all those dirty, dirty guns... *sigh*

That is all.